Thursday, 30 June 2011

Look, I'm wearing yellow! What's going on? And why won't this post show up in Google Reader if I have the word Crack in the title?

Collection 2000 Hot Looks 22 Oh La La.

No, I've not gone back to chain-smoking, instead I am wearing Collection 2000 Hot Looks Oh La La, a pearly golden yellow that simply isn't my colour whatsoever. Don't even know how it came to be in my possession, must have borrowed it from someone. Sorry if it's yours, you can have it back. I'm so far out of my comfort zone right now that I am situated somewhere near Neptune.

Back to the polish - application was not a problem, four coats were needed for opacity and drying time was utterly ridiculous -- it refused to dry and stayed in an uncured state for most of the evening, so possibly the formula has gone off. It is old and a bit smelly.

I'd read about Custom Painting Pearls and their holographic flakes over at Blingernails (thanks Missus Blingernails, you're my hero) and naturally ordered a nice 25g bag. That's a lot of bling :) Immediately after delivery I got to the mad experimentation and managed to produce this franken of Laura Paige Black Crackle and holographic flakes, which are more like tiny holo glitters.

Holo is My Crack franken. It's not really working as it should

I had to add a lot of the holo glitter to get the final effect, which wasn't all that (but better than the above pic). The glitter also left the franken rather dense and hard to work with, and the amount of glitter added affected the cracking and it didn't crackle as much -- the W7 Earthquake Silver hardly cracked at all with the added holo.

The franken was very powdery, had the same texture as dried cement and needed several layers of top coat to bring out the bling. It wasn't all that holo-y but I still named it 'Holo is My Crack'.

Now with added Spectraflair top-coat and a nice tip-chip

I did initially give the crackle the Spectraflair treatment but it didn't show up at all, which was a bit gutting as crackle would look AWESOME with linear holo. So I chucked some Spectraflair top-coat over it.

TOP TIP: Has your Spectraflair polish gone horribly wrong? Never fear, put some thinner in the bottle, let the Spectraflair sediment settle to the bottom and then pour out the contents onto a paper towel. The paper towel should absorb a lot of the thinned polish, leaving you with a pretty pile of Spectraflair on the towel and in the bottle.

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

So I decided to go out of my comfort zone this week, going to try new things, like purchasing a pair of black wedgey sandals because I have too many pairs of black boots. Expect a post about broken ankles, and soon! Also going to try and not stamp my nails this week, for a laugh.

Right, today's new thing is to do stuff with pastely colours. As it's Pink Wednesday, lets have a look at this here La Femme Pink Cream.

Two coats of La Femme Pink Cream. Had worse.

La Femme is a cheap and cheerful brand that isn't too bad really. I've had worse, but I'm old. The colour is like a kick-arse bubblegum pink, it's well-pigmented and TBH I'm not sure it counts as a pastel. It did not like my base-coat at all and had to go on naked nails - even then the application wasn't as pleasant as it could have been, it went a bit patchy and sometimes lumpy. A spot of top-coat smoothed the finish out, though, and it looked alright after that. Actually quite like this colour, yay for trying something new.

It's got this plastic finish wot I love

I wanted another go at the easier marbling (tutorial here), which technically isn't a new thing as I done it t'other day, but I wanted to improve on my n00bskillz. Used La Femme Pink Cream, La Femme Lavender Cream and Barry M Matt White as the marbling polishes.

Did pretty much the same thing as last time, quick circle of base-coat, some drops of different colour polish (made the drops wider by teasing them with a marbling tool), did S-shape squiggles and made it look like an abstract mess that I liked. I applied a very thin coat of the base colour to the nail before applying the marbly polish so it stuck to the nail a bit better.

The pic on the left is my favourite nail as it reminds me of Jupiter. Why, yes, I did manage to dent it at the bottom almost immediately after putting on top-coat :(

Rebel, rebel, your nails are a mess.

By the time I'd gotten round to taking photos I'd ruined a few bits and had to do some repairs and a very rushed clean-up job, so the pix look horrible and lumpy. Still wearing it, though.

Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Awful weather here, we've had this storm that will not go away and I've left the washing out on the line :O

Anyway, recently got given a couple of blog awards, hurray!

Rules:
1. Thank the person who tagged you and link to their blog.
2. Put the Top 10 Award logo on your blog.
3. List your top 10 cosmetics.
4. Choose 10 bloggers to tag, link to their blogs, and let them know

Not very good with this sort of thing as I'm not very girlie, so here is an attempt at my top 10 cosmetics:

1). Right. Nail polish.
2). YSL Touche Eclat (I have run out :( )
3). Black eyeliner.
4). Black mascara.
5). Boots No 7 Illuminating stuff.
6). Actually, the Boots No 7 glycolic acid peel stuff was quite good as well.
7). Hair dye in red or purple, or a mix of the two.
8). Errrrr ...
9). Oooh, I got some GOSH primer the other week and it does the job nicely. I think. It's my first primer so I haven't a clue :)
10). That'll do.

Shall get to the tags in a moments, but firstly it's time for ...

Rules:
Thank & link back the person who gave you the award.
Write a post about it.
Pass it on to 10 bloggers you think really deserve it.

Thank you very much for this, Laura and your Lacquers, it brought a little bit of sunshine in what was a very grey and British day :)

And now for the tags ... I've combined the tagging so there are only ten. Cop-out. Anyway, if you're tagged then pick whatever award you want, and if you've already got both then I will make you a cup of tea with a HobNob :)

Sunday, 26 June 2011

Wanted to snuggle up and luxuriate in some shade of red. Luckily, OPI Tease-y Does It wanted to snuggle up with me, and I couldn't resist it's wanton charms.

OPI Tease-y Does It. Three coats.

Tease-y Does It is a deep burgundy with a red shimmer that shifts to gold and green in the bottle, but not so much on the nails - you can just about make out the colour-shift in the photo. Application was no problem and it took three coats to get a good shiny finish. Not my usual sort of colour at all, but the red shimmer completely won me over and I, errr, like it.

I can't water-marble, it gives me the right hump, but I wanted to try out some marbled nails with the Tease-y Does It, Urban Decay Twisted (gold) and China Glaze Ruby Pumps (red). The following method came about whilst practising for yet another water-marbling disaster, and I found it to be much easier and less messier than the water-marbling. Not only that but the polishes take a while to dry as well, giving you more time to work. Result! On the downside, it's very slow process as you have to let thick layers of polish dry, this is awful if you're an impatient soul like me.

You will need some polishes, one of those floppy plastic CD containers, a marbling tool/toothpick/watchmaker's screwdriver/small pointy implement and a sharp scrapey thing, such as a razor, knife or Konad scraper.

You will need these things.

1. Draw a large circle with a fairly thick layer of your base colour polish. Try to size it so it fully covers your nail.

It's my rarely seen thumb!

2. Drop a drop of your next polish in the centre of the still-wet polish. It spreads a bit further if you drop it from a bit of a height, and you can spread it a bit further by gently pushing it with the brush/marbling tool. Add another drop if it doesn't spread very far.

3. Same as above with your third polish. You see where I'm going with this, don't you.

Drip the polish, make pattern.

4. Starting from the top, lightly drag your chosen marbling tool through the wet polishes. Looks like a <3, ahhh.

Future Valentine's Day Manicure spotted.

5. Do some more straight lines. Or squiggles, whatever, this marbling is much more fun to experiment with.

Did some more straight lines

6. Now it's time for the hardest part -- letting it dry. It takes ages. Leave it overnight if possible.

7. A few hours or so later, peel a bit using a razor-blade or a Konad scraper-me-do. It should peel off easily, if not leave to dry for a bit longer.

Picking at it, finding it not dry, trying to leave it alone. This is hard.

8. Grab your peeled bit and gently peel it off the plastic with your fingers. Again, if it seems a bit tacky or sticks to the plastic, leave it for a bit longer.

9. Put on a thin layer of top-coat/base colour. Apply the marbled polish on your nail, position it in a way that you like, and trim any excess off with some little scissors. Don't worry if you can't get all of it, that can be sorted with a brush and some nail polish remover.

Oh, that looks so attractive.

10. Apply some top-coat. If you have any peely bits put some top-coat underneath and stick 'em down.

11. Remove the excess, admire your work. I've only done the ring finger on each hand as I am doing things later that will more than likely ruin it all :(

Saturday, 25 June 2011

I saw a post quite recently on Blingernails about the wonderful Spectraflair pigment and I had to have a go at it because it looked so gorgeous and colourful and blingtastic. In fact, Blingernails is currently having a giveaway and one of the prizes is some of the luvverly Spectraflair. Go enter!

I scored a gram of it from Custom Creation Paints and it turned up a couple of days later. Hurray. As I'd always fancied a good, black holo polish I made one out of some MUA Shade 2 (black)and some Spectraflair and called it Blimey Holographic.

One coat of franken Blimey Holographic

Dodgy photos today as there has been no sun, and my camera could only pick up the holo under certain lighting conditions, so had to make do with my melting desk-lamp. Have to say that the nails looked fantastic in Costa's yesterday, and I may have done a spot of finger-waggling with my large mocha. Such a poser.

Blimey Holographic in the Ferrari Pose

Some nice holo going on there. This is the bit where I'm unfortunately a bit unhelpful and say that I have no idea how much Spectraflair I put in, just added small amounts with a tiny scoop thingee then thought, "oh that looks OK, I'll put some on now". Didn't add a great amount as there is still LOADS left, really was maybe a bit stingy with it.

I had this bottle of silver Konad Special polish that wasn't all that, and spent it's life sitting in a box waiting to be used. It got the Spectraflair treatment and I attempted a Konad with the new holoed up polish and fauxnad Image Plate B (design is also on Konad plate m50). The holo didn't show up at all until it got some top-coat over it, then it looked pretty rainbowy. Finished it off with some dots of holo glitter (an ancient bottle of Boots 17 Party Animal) and was all blinged up for the weekend.

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

This only took one coat to get right, which made a change. The polish was nicely metallic and rosy-pink (it's also bloomin' ace for stamping), however, it wasn't really my sorta pink and had to be covered with stuff.
Moondancerjen posted about BIG fauxnad plates a while back and I just had to get plate B. It arrived a bit bent so I put things on it and jumped on it for a while and it was still bent. Fortunately most of the stampy-etchings worked fine, except the one that looks like a woman with a bucket on her head.

Before Scooter and the top-coat killed it :'(

This is one of the full-nail patterns of Big Image Plate B (it's also on Konad m78). Not a pattern I would have normally chosen but it worked really well with the pink metallic base, turned out a bit Minxy.

Managed to spoil this mani in record time with a top-coat stamping smearing incident, then took chunks out of it by listening to Scooter quite loudly. Not really sure how that happened.

Monday, 20 June 2011

Have been proper stressed out about things and felt the need to comfort my frazzled nerves with even more purple. Yes, more purple, sorry 'bout that. It's Color Club Alias which is a good purple, it made me quite finger-waggly and smiley-face.

Three coats of Color Club Alias

On initial looks Alias is a dark purple with a bit of a pink and blue shimmer reminiscent of Orly Out of This World. Waggle your fingers a bit and you get a pinky-red to green-gold colour shift, very similar to Orly Space Cadet. Nice.

Finger-waggling in natural light

This polish is great, and is probably my new favourite (can't remember what the old one was but it was more than likely purple).

A flower?

I've kinda been meandering towards the old cigarettes again lately, so distracted myself from the nicotine by stamping over this lovely, beautiful colour D: It came out alright, though, bit of Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold) and a flower from GCOCL G16/K04 did the trick rather nicely. Added a rhinestone to fiddle with as well.

Completely ruined it all by fiddling with the back of a computer whilst the top-coat was still a bit squidgy.

Sunday, 19 June 2011

It's time for the final installment of "What's in the Boots 17 Gift Set"! TFFT! Just need to swatch this Boots 17 Fast Finish Peacock and the attractive Gift Set box will be mine.

Two coats of Boots 17 Fast Finish Peacock

Good, bold colour, fantastic shimmer, meh application. I've never really gotten on with these Fast Finish polishes, they don't seem to glide as nicely as the Lasting Fix ones.

This is what a shimmery, glittery sea of yeah baby looks like

I decided to bling it up the Peacock a bit with some Sinful Colors Nail Junkie, which I felt was one of the better decisions I made this weekend. This glitter polish was just stonking over the Boots 17 Peacock, absolutely stonking -- it was like looking at a glittery, shimmery sea of yeah baby. Like every other polish job that I've loved and adored, it got slightly damaged by my usual clumsy cack-handedness, and needed some repairs. Glitter and Konad made this easy.

Reminds me of a 1980's Miami Airport

Found this peacock design on GCOCL G18/K06 and thought that it would look alright in gold, so used some Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold, discontinued available for cheap on eBay) and stamped away. Really liked this one, shame it got ruined by sandpaper.

Thursday, 16 June 2011

Haven't got a lot of time for nails at the mo as I'm meant to be organising a wedding, which is just silly as I'm utterly useless at organising things. Couldn't sort out a piss-up in a brewery TBH. Incidentally, I've not really organised my nail polishes either, I just grab one, go, "oooh, that one looks alright" and put it on. This is how I came to be wearing Opi Ink Suede.

Opi Ink Suede. Better than Brett Anderson.

Whenever I use these delightful Suede polishes I get Suede songs in my head which isn't as delightful as I don't care for the sound of Brett Anderson's voice. Whiny. And with that said, Ink went on well and looked very nice with some shimmertastic action going on. It eventually got Konaded with GCOCL plate G16 and some MUA Shade 13 (silver) polish, which turned out to be a bit OTT.

Some OTT stamping that I couldn't be arsed to sort out.

Really, what I should have done is gone over the fingers again with some more Ink, but instead I put rhinestones on the ring finger nails and thoroughly enjoyed picking away at them all night.

Saturday, 11 June 2011

Two more Boots 17 Mini polishes to go -- there are only nine polishes in the box but it has taken me yonks to go through them all. This one is Boots 17 Lasting Fix Royal Indigo.

Boots 17 Lasting Fix Royal actually looks a bit lighter

The polish looks darker in the picture as the camera didn't like this colour at all. I liked it, though, it went on smoothly and only took a couple of coats - much preferring this Lasting Fix stuff over the Fast Finish.

Yes, this is pretty fine.

Decided to replace my usual Konad addiction with a nice bit of crack. le. Yeah, weak, sorry. Not really the biggest fan of crackle finishes (Mr Luton is nuts about them) but this one has grown on me over the days. It's W7 Earthquake Silver crackle polish and it's pretty sparkly. Seems a bit thirsty, taking a couple of coats of top-coat to get it all smooth and shiny, other than that it's champion stuff.

Wednesday, 8 June 2011

I'm not sure about that apostrophe in the title, so I'll change it (thanks fer the apostrophe help, Tilly)

There, that looks better.

Anyway, getting into another colour-rut again and thought that a Pink Wednesday was in order. Collection 2000 35 Dynasty, a very cute pink, caught my eye and demanded my immediate attention. Okey dokey ...

I have a bit of a soft spot for Collection 2000 35 Dynasty.

It's an old bottle that I bought a couple of years back, which is why it's in a state. Formula had gone a bit goopy but this was quickly fixed with some thinner and it went on beautifully after that.

This polish made me feel like I should have been wearing pink fluffy slippers and pink feathers or something. It was weird so I stamped some skulls on it.

Skulls and proper girlie pinks own.

:3 Skulls came from plate HB-005 and I gave Barry M 66 Matt White a go as a stamping polish. It was nicely subtle over the pink, but I'm not sure it would be much cop over darker colours. I'll give that a go next time I need to procrastinate. Probably in about ten minutes :)

Monday, 6 June 2011

Going to try to finish swatching these Boots 17 mini polishes this week as I want to use the rather attractive box for things. We've got Boots 17 Fast Finish Moonstruck today, isn't that nice?

Boots 17 Fast Finish Moonstruck. More peas, Norma?

I like this colour but at the same time hate it as it makes my fingers look grubby and a bit John Major Grey. Not good. Going to moan about application now, it was lumpy and fiddly and had to be done a couple of times as it just didn't want to go on nicely. The polish does dry very fast though, maybe that was the source of the lumpiness. Hmph.

Konaded some dragons over the polish and it was OK, a bit boring maybe, but adequate. Stamping plate used was HB-002 and stamping polish was the Konad Special Black polish, as the plate didn't care for my usual cheapo black polish.

Dragons and glitter and more glitter

I got bored and fidgety later on and added some random silver glitter polish over the grey-silver, then added some Saffron Colour 09 (pink and silver glitter) on the accent finger. Much better. Hurray for glitter \o/

Saturday, 4 June 2011

I picked up some of the, quite frankly, gorgeous OPI Suedes recently and hadn't had a chance to wear them as I have too much polish. OPI Russian Navy Suede, a matte navy blue with a kick-arse silver shimmer, is my pick for the weekend.

OPI Russian Navy Suede Swatch. Fandabydosy

You can get away with one coat if you're tidy. I'm not and needed two coats to get the coverage nice and even. Yeah baby. Then it looked fab and I was all <3 with it.

I'd read some bits about the OPI Suedes chipping really easily, but I had no noticeable problems with this, which made a very pleasant change, but this did not stop me pre-emptively Konading it later on the day.

Messy stamping, it was hot and humid <excuse />

Used part of a full nail pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-210 and some Superdrug MUA Shade 11 (silver). This silver isn't quite as in-yer-face as the Stargazer 232 Chrome silver and is very suitable for subtle stampings over dark colours.

MUA Shade 11. Konad Special Silver polish. FIGHT!

Forgot to include the MUA Shade 11 stamping test-me-do t'other day, so I'm doing it now. The stamping on the top of the nail is MUA Shade 11 (£1) and the stamping on the bottom of the nail is the Konad Special Silver polish (about £3.99). Not much difference between them at all except for the price - the Konad Special Silver polish just seems a bit more shimmery. Neither of the polishes really showed up against a light background so I've not bothered including those pics.

Finally, in other news, I have purchased a dress for the OWIHTWAD, aka the wedding.

Wedding.

Gulp. See, OWIHTWAD isn't nearly as scary.

But yeah, getting married on 8th July, have told my family so can go on about it now. Am excited yet UTTERLY TERRIFIED at the same time but it will be great as we're having the reception at the Sonisphere Festival down the road and our wedding bands will be Diamond Head, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica. It had to be done, so if you're going you are invited to our reception \m/

Thursday, 2 June 2011

In the past, I've used a few polishes that made me think, "oooh, this'll be good for stamping", and then quickly forgotten about testing them out. However, today is different as Jennius reminded me about it :)

Testing out yesterday's Stargazer 315 over China Glaze The Ten Man (left), Collection 2000 Wham* (centre) and Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (right). Didn't come out too bad actually, I've seen a lot worse. The polish is £2.50 from Stargazer which is downright bargainous for such a fabby fab fab colour.

And this one is Accessorize Idol over the same polishes as above. Good effort here, the stamped pattern came out as a mostly opaque dark grey with a bit of shimmer to it as well. It's currently sold-out on Accessorize and Superdrug's websites at the mo, but you might be able to find it for £2 at your local Superdrug.